The present invention relates to interactive user interface techniques. More specifically, the invention relates to techniques that present an image of a hierarchical node-link structure and respond to requests from a user to modify the image to make part of the structure more visible.
Pope, S. T., Goldberg, A., and Leibs, D., "The ParcPlace Systems Navigator Applications and Frameworks," presented at ACM SigGraph Symposium on User Interface Software, October 1988, Banff, Canada, pp. 1-30, is a set of slides describing Navigator, a window/menu-based user interface. FIG. 1 on page 3 shows several possible representations of hierarchies and lists. Other examples of hierarchical representations appear on pages 4-7, 11-13, 15-19, 21, 23, 27, and 29-30. FIG. 13 on page 13 and several other figures show examples of arrows at the boundary of a hierarchical representation that can be selected to scroll the entire representation.
Halasz, F. G., Moran, T. P., and Trigg, R. H., "NoteCards in a Nutshell," in Proceedings of CHI+GI 1987 (Toronto, Apr. 5-9, 1987), ACM, New York, 1987, pp. 45-52, describe NoteCards, a system in which notecards containing an arbitrary amount of information are connected by links. Page 48 indicates that NoteCards requires that every notecard be filed in a FileBox, a card in which other cards can be filed, and that the FileBox structure form a true hierarchy, i.e. a directed acyclic graph. FIG. 3 on page 49 shows a browser of a FileBox hierarchy which, as shown, includes nodes that are parallel rectangles. The rectangles are not of equal length, but the left sides of a set of siblings are aligned. A small scale representation of the complete hierarchy appears in the upper left hand corner of FIG. 3.
Rappaport et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,889, describe a graphic display that shows links between chunks of knowledge, such as in FIGS. 7 and 8. As shown and described in relation to FIG. 9, the user can, with mouse clicks, obtain a display of links from a displayed chunk of knowledge to other chunks of knowledge, which are added to the display. Screen scrolling mechanisms allow movement from one area of the overall graph to another.
Furnas, G. W., "Generalized Fisheye Views," CHI '86 Proceedings, ACM, April 1986, pp. 16--23, describes fisheye views that provide a balance of local detail and global context. Section 1 discusses fisheye lenses that show places nearby in great detail while still showing the whole world, showing remote regions in successively less detail; a caricature is the poster of the "New Yorker's View of the United States." Section 3 describes a degree of interest (DOI) function that assigns, to each point in a structure, a number telling how interested the user is in seeing that point, given the current task. A display can then be made by showing the most interesting points, as indicated by the DOI function. The fisheye view can achieve, for example, a logarithmically compressed display of a tree, as illustrated by FIG. 4 for a tree structured text file. Section 4 also describes fisheye views for botanical taxonomies, legal codes, text outlines, a decision tree, a telephone area code directory, a corporate directory, and UNIX file hierarchy listings. Section 5 indicates that a display-relevant notion of a priori importance can be defined for lists, trees, acyclic directed graphs, general graphs, and Euclidean spaces; unlike the geographic example which inspired the metaphor of the "New Yorker's View," the underlying structures need not be spatial, nor need the output be graphic. FIG. 6 shows a fisheye calendar.